


The Reluctant King: Being the Thirteenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: The Sword [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-04-18 17:34:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14218212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC





	1. Mine Camp

I haven’t jotted anything down in here in a while; it’s because things in camp are ugly and getting uglier by the day.

I mentioned some little time ago how Melegrethan and I were jumped by some thugs on our way back to the camp from an adventure I’d had exploring the seas outside the Realm [Editors’ Note: at the end of the 11th Tale]; I learned something important then, but what I didn’t know at the time was that the thugs had lingered in the neighborhood, biding their time, and that they would more or less take the camp over while I was away sorting things out at Uncle Fixit’s [Editors’ Note: during the 12th Tale].

The camp had a rather nice system of punishments and rewards set up for the campers, and by ‘nice’, I mean fair, just, even-handed and even well-respected by the campers; this system was most of why I had been allowed to go to Uncle Fixit’s in the first place, but it and many other things had come to an abrupt end once the thugs moved in and took over.

Now, when I say “took over”, I mean just that: the thugs ultimately control what goes on in the camp, either through force or threat of force. Anything any of them tells anyone of us to do has to be done, and with the utmost expeditiousness and care, OR ELSE; this includes the erstwhile staff. Right at the start, the thugs formed a fortified perimeter around the camp and forbade anyone from leaving the camp for any reason, while foot patrols, guard towers and searchlights enforce a strict curfew. Every morning begins with a mass assembly in the main courtyard, where we are all counted and tallied against the camp’s roster. It was and is all most unpleasant.

Aside from all that, the thugs mostly leave us to do what we want, which means that things mostly go on just as they went before, adding to the increasingly surreal air of the camp under the thugs. The thugs are seemingly utterly uninterested in what we do, unless it’s defying a command of theirs or trying to escape; they haven’t made us work at any particular thing that we weren’t already doing; they sort-of defer to the staffers on matters of instruction, sport, or other such activities; and there are very few hints of their chain of command, though certain seldom seen thugs are obviously in their upper crust, if scum like that can be said to have such.

Nobody knows who the thugs are, how many of them there are in or near the camp at any one time, or (aside from Melegrethan and I; I’ll explain in a moment) for whom they are working; rumors are thus flying thick and fast, but all that most of them really know for sure is that things were and are rapidly becoming intolerable. Now, when Melegrethan and I had been jumped by some of these same thugs, I (at least; almost certainly Melegrethan as well) had seen their leader: the youngest of the camp counselors, the one I’ve been calling Mr Price. He was definitely and certainly the guy in charge of that attack at the very least, but after the thugs took over, he had been lumped in with the rest of us, seemingly unconnected with the thugs or their hierarchy (such as we can discern it). It confused me until I realized that he was playing the spy amongst us; what to do about him was and remains the most vexing puzzle, especially as Melegrethan wants me to take no action for the nonce.

At any rate, this particular camp was, as I’ve mentioned before, a camp for troubled youth filled entirely with guys; while this set-up actually facilitated both the thugs’ takeover and keeping said takeover hidden from the local community, the campers were mostly of a temperament that made them possibly the least likely people on the planet to just roll over and accept the sudden ‘change of management’, especially when the ‘new management’ was a brutal and capricious bunch of thugs with no discernible purpose or agenda, aside from cruelties great and petty. For each of the camper, then, there would come a point where the new status quo could no longer be borne. Sooner or later, this breaking point must come.

Manfredi and Johnson, as I’ll call them, reached their breaking points just as I got back to camp and was acquainted with the new state of affairs. Together, they went over the wall after a week of fevered planning, in which many other camper took an avid part. They went over the wall… and were cut down like felons fleeing Alcatraz—cut down by fire from a machine-gun nest perfectly placed to cover their exact escape route.

Their bodies were laid out for all of us to behold in the mud of the main courtyard when we formed up for the next morning’s assembly.

The former head of the camp, a Mrs Hoffy, was practically incandescent with outrage over this casual contempt for the bodies of those who had until recently been in her charge, but her protests went unheeded.

It was at this point that Melegrethan and I and a handful of his other martial arts students stepped forward to lay claim to the bodies; once we made it painfully clear to the thugs that we only wanted to give the dead a decent and proper burial, the thugs yielded with even less grace than might have been expected of them.

Oddly enough, Cookie and Joey, the two preteens who had accompanied me on my seafarings and stayed behind (to the best of my knowledge), came back to the camp that same day. Or Joey came back; as Cookie was a girl, she’d been at the sister camp a few miles north of this camp. Since she and Joey were together, however, they and the adults with them were made to stay by the thugs. I made a point of openly and obviously keeping a watchful eye on Cookie, since I frankly didn’t trust that she’d stay safe otherwise; the thugs obviously thought it best not to test Melegrethan’s prize pupil in martial arts after the confrontation over the bodies.

Cookie bunks with Mrs Hoffy, Mrs Blondie, and the few other female staffers, easing my mind during the hours of curfew, but I have other concerns during the nights, which are best not committed to paper just yet but mostly revolve around what the game Mr Price is playing actually is, and how best to expose him at it.

I need more time to study this situation and discern what the various sides are, but the stresses we’re all under are such that I can’t afford to take the time that would be needed. If this state of affairs goes on much longer, the rehabilitative work the camp strove for will come apart, and all the campers will turn more feral than they ever were before they got here. The only good thing I can really say about the thugs are that they’re not Scowrers, though the fact that they’re even eligible for such a comparison is horrifying enough.

All in all, the situation in the camp is getting downright explosive, which makes me wonder all the more at Melegrethan’s continued restraint. Certainly, I never expected to be sent back into the Realm on another mission before the camp was freed from the thugs, yet that’s exactly what happened…

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. Lost

Now, to say that I was unprepared for this most recent jaunt into the Realm would be to understate the case so seriously that it would actually be comical. I wasn’t even aware that I was about to be sent off; I was just suddenly enfolded in the weird, silvery, swirly and somewhat vertiginous intermediate place through which I always went on my way to the Realm. Once again, the First Protector declined to put in an appearance, so there was no help to be had from that quarter.

I appeared in the Throne Room, which was a scene of barely controlled panic such as I’d never seen it. I’d seen it under threat of a Scowrer invasion (twice), taken over by an evil Magician, unexpectedly receiving ambassadors from places no one in the Realm knew existed, and in the middle of an impromptu feast for dozens of people (and if you think that that last doesn’t inherently contain its share of panic, you’ve never had to organize one); none of them had prompted such a scene. The former Meredith “Merry” Maxime, now wife to Perethegrast (Perry), Heir Apparent to Alamanast, King of the Realm, Second of that Name (etc), was seated on her throne and rocking her very small infant in such a way that suggested a drowning woman clinging to the one lifeline in reach. I surmised keeping the baby quiescent was why the panic was being held back, however barely. [Editors’ Note: the events referred to occurred in the 8th, 9th, 1st, 10th, and 1st (again) Tales, respectively.]

Alamanast himself was not present: he was in the Royal Chambers, dying. I have to admit that the news shook me, coming as it did so soon after Manfredi and Johnson; I could see why the whole place was in a tizzy, but I was slightly mistaken, because…

Perethegrast was not present either: as soon as he’d been told the King was dying, he’d run off—because his father was dying. Yeah, I could definitely see Perry doing that. For such a gregarious person, he was remarkably private in his griefs.

To say Merry was not pleased with this state of affairs would be an even greater understatement than the one I proposed earlier, which made my mission obvious: find Perry and bring him back to assume the throne, or the entire Realm was in jeopardy. If the Realm’s enemies or even one of their more distant fiefs got the idea that the Realm was without leadership, or doubted the legitimacy of that leadership, challenging that leadership in order to obtain concessions the Realm ultimately couldn’t afford would almost certainly follow. My studies of the Byzantines were pretty clear on that.

So, Perry had the whole Realm in which to hide, and I had maybe a few hours in which to find him. You see, I had to be in my bunkhouse/barracks/cabin/whatever you want to call it before curfew; certainly my disappearing all day after the morning assembly would be noticed, but unless I broke curfew, it would be allowed to pass in silence. In practice, this meant the less time I took to clear this up the better, not only for the Realm and Merry, but also for me personally.

OK; now I needed to catechize Merry and the others about the particulars of Perry’s flight, beginning with: how long had he been gone? Two days. Did anyone see the direction in which he’d gone? The opposite way from the one that would lead back to the Hand-Spread. What did he take with him? Almost nothing. Did he leave a note? No; he was far too upset for that.

So, breaking down the answers, my thoughts went thus: Two days gave Perry enough time to reach anywhere in the Realm, even the fiefs one could only reach through the Tree Portals; this was not helpful. On the other hand, Perry hadn’t fled toward the Chamber of the Tree, so he was probably nearer rather than farther.

Perry took almost nothing with him, which meant he needed to get what he needed at his destination or along the way; this would be exactly zero problem for the Heir Apparent were he to announce himself, but if he wanted to cloak his identity (slim chance there, but vaguely possible), he would prefer picking up stuff he might have cached beforehand. Against that level of clear thinking or foresight was the fact that he had been “far too upset” to leave a note, which very much fit with what I knew of Perry (and the entire Line of Magnatharast, come to think of it).

I had been circling around an idea that had jumped into my mind as soon as I’d heard that Perry had run away; I’d told myself how unlikely it was, that the place might not even exist yet, and any number of other such dodges to try to disqualify what was in actuality the place I ought to try first: the little retreat my Alamsta maintained as her own “I gotta get outta dis place” place in that distant future of the Realm that I had first been called to Protect [Editors’ Note: as told in the 7th Tale]. It was painful to think of that far-off time and what I’d lost when the Coin vanished, so I tried not to. Yet I was still and am still the Young Protector, even through my resistance.

One aspect of being a Protector of the Realm is that when a problem hits, the correct solution tends to leap into your mind as an instinctual response; this neatly avoids the paralysis that can occur when you need to make a decision so immediately that you have no time to sit down and think it through like you’re used to doing. Since losing the Coin, these intuitive flashes had all but abandoned me, in a sign of my near-unfitness for the Protectorship. After my struggle before and during Dark Alamsta’s ascent, however, the instincts had begun to return [Editors’ Note: at the end of the 12th Tale]. This was one of them, though I resisted its truth for the pain it brought in its wake.

Another aspect of being a Protector of the Realm is that the responsibility to Protect the Realm and the Line of Magnatharast must supersede whatever pain the Protector has to undergo to fulfill this charge, whether the pain be physical or emotional. I was and am still the Young Protector, serving the Realm unto the uttermost and no matter the cost; the ascent (or descent, if you prefer) of Dark Alamsta had crystallized this in my mind, my heart, and my soul. I am the Young Protector, come what may.

So I followed the Protectorly instinct and set out for my Alamsta’s retreat. I only told Merry and the castle folk that I had a notion where Perry probably was and was off to bring him back; I stressed the point that I must needs go alone, or Perry might flee again and farther, which Merry understood. I dipped into the woods to shake off the two pursuers that were rather obvious in their tailing of me but allowed the third, much more skilled pursuer track me a little bit longer before I left him standing at the river bank in perplexity at how I’d managed to lose him.

After all that, finding the small house that was to become my Alamsta’s retreat and having Perry actually answer the door when I knocked was rather an anticlimax…

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. Found

Perry let me into the small house without a word, and I left it to him to break the silence. We both knew why I had come and why he had come; what we needed to decide was what we were going to do about it. Just by my presence, I would remind Perry of his duties and responsibilities, so I felt no need to rush into some smarmy speech that would flatter Perry’s ego with hollow phrases of meaningless praise; such were the ways of the enemy that had prompted Dark Alamsta’s fall.

How would I handle this, though? I had to figure out a way to convince Perry to come back to the castle with me as soon as we could go, but what was the best way to do that? Should I mention Merry and the baby? Should I avoid mentioning them? This could be even harder than trying to talk the Scowrers’ War Witch out of invading the Realm, but I had to not simply try but in fact succeed. There would be no convenient colony of sporks for me to use to drive Perry back to the castle, nor would force of arms avail, even should I find others willing to assist in returning Perry to the castle against his will. No, Perry had to return and shoulder his ever-increasing burdens willingly, or the Realm would tear itself apart.

I couldn’t afford to fail, so I had to trust that I wouldn’t; such is the way of a Protector of the Realm.

Perry’s countenance was, as one might expect, full of worry, grief and anguish that he didn’t even bother to try to conceal; while Merry had been much as I remembered, and the babe in her arms indicated that not too much time had elapsed since I’d last seen them, Perry looked like he’d aged a decade or more. Shakespeare wrote that “silence is the perfectest herald of joy”, but it can also be the most meaningful expression to one who is grieving, so the silence between us stretched on. I took the opportunity to look around the house in general and the room in which we stood in particular.

For all appearances, the house might have been the same one my Alamsta used for her retreat. It was rather small and mostly unadorned, but it wasn’t nearly plain enough to be a hovel, like the quarters at the Hand-Spread Stop that had been the site of my first arrival in the Realm. Another thing that distinguished the one from the other was that, despite what you might consider a reasonable expectation that Perry as the Heir Apparent would never have built a fire, swept a room or wielded a feather duster, this house was actually much neater and better kept than the hovels at the Hand-Spread Stop.

As far as I could tell, Perry had kept the house clear of any sign of his rank, as had my Alamsta in her age, and for the same reason: this house was to be a sanctuary for the Heirs to the Line of Magnatharast, a refuge where they could be free from all the manifold strains and stresses that came with their rank. Now that I reflect on it, taking care of all the house-bound chores was probably an important part of that, as a relatively simple set of tasks that needed to be done on a regular basis and could thereby serve as stress relief.

The house, or at least the room Perry and I were in, had large windows that bore screens (which I think were wire, but might have been of some other material) rather than glass; I assumed this was a compromise between the luxury of having large windows and the seeming rarity and/or expense of large panes of glass. In any case, the windows let quite a bit of light and air into the room, giving it a rather home-y feel.

The furnishings were rather sparse: there was a large and comfortable-looking rocking chair with a few blankets thrown on it; there was a desk in one corner where it would get the best light at any time of day; there was a bookcase, its shelves lightly laden with various volumes of what I assumed were popular literature; there were a pair of chairs for those Perry might entertain here; and there was what we would usually call a coffee table, its surface littered with various things. The most central and obvious of these things was what caught and held my attention.

Resting casually on a miniature easel custom-built to hold it up for display was the Coin. The Coin had been, of course, my gateway to the Realm in my first series of travels there, taking me to a time when Alamanast of the Realm, Twelfth of that Name ruled rather than the present where Alamanast of the Realm, Second of that Name lay dying. I had last seen the Coin flying from my hands into the depths of the Garage in Uncle Fixit’s place; all my searches for it had come up empty in the years since then, but now, after I’d given up on ever seeing it again, here it was.

I had never understood why I lost the Coin; the loss had been one that burned at the back of my heart all the time since.

Perry still said nothing as I moved over to the table; I’m not sure that I could have coherently replied had he tried to start a conversation then. Every thought running through my brain revolved around the Coin.

My fingers trembled as I reached out to touch the Coin, Perry all but forgotten in my fixation on that timeworn bit of metal. I couldn’t not reach for it: I had to touch it, to assure myself that I wasn’t hallucinating it, and to prove that it truly was there. As soon as I did touch it, as soon as my fingers played upon the familiar dips and rises on its surface, I knew that it was indeed the Coin that I had held close to myself so long ago.

For a moment, I was overwhelmed by the irony of setting out to find Perry, succeeding, and then finding something else that had been precious to me before I had lost it. Now both person and thing were found, and while I wondered what it meant, I couldn’t stop the exaltation flooding my heart—nor did I want to, really.

I had not seen hide nor hair of the Medallion in this era either, aside from its appearance on my neck at the climax of my confrontation with Dark Alamsta; I had thus assumed that it had not been forged yet, or in some other way hadn’t come into the possession of the rulers of the Realm. Was I mistaken in that, as well?

What did it mean that, up until this point, I had almost exclusively borne the Sword in my visits to this era of the Realm?

So many other and similar questions flooded my mind until my head ached with them, but the joy continued, even under the barrage of my confusion. I shut my eyes for a moment against the cacophony, but they flew open again when I heard:

“Ah. There you are, Young Protector.”

Without even looking, I knew that the deep, resonant pseudo-voice was that of the First Protector. I turned in the direction whence his voice had come…

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. Persuasion

I was back in silvery swirly gray land again, looking at the familiar features of the First Protector and wondering why he seemed so confoundedly smug. ‘I won the bet,’ he explained before I could ask him. ‘The Artificer, he who you encountered so briefly in that place where he and your uncle each labored so long, was of the opinion that your rehabilitation would take much longer than it has.’

I knew my face reflected my downcast spirits when I replied, “You may not have won after all.”

The First Protector smiled, for a wonder. ‘Ah, but I have, and so we all have. The fact that we’re consulting here is proof positive.’ He turned to stare at the mist surrounding us. ‘I’m pleased, not least because I so despise composing letters.’

I didn’t want to bring him down, but something in me compelled me to say, “But I’ve only barely begun to feel the Promptings again, and they’ve been so weak that I almost missed them.”

‘Like a muscle left to atrophy, they will be weak at first, and strength will return only painfully, but it will return.’

Driven to the point of despair at the First Protector’s certitude in the face of my utter confusion, I poured out all the muddle I was in: my ever-increasing anger at my parents’ death and the violence it so easily called forth in me; my failure at diplomacy with the Scowrers and my suspicion that I’d wanted to fail so I could kill them without guilt; my horror at the Magician’s naming me “the Assassin” rather than “the Protector”; my uncertainty over what to do about the situation in the Camp, with my first impulses again being violent ones; and my self-doubt over my ability to convince Perry to return with me to face his father’s impending death.

A grave but compassionate look came over the First Protector’s face. ‘Now that you are older (and hopefully wiser), the Enemy is trying to work corruption on you much more subtly than before in the hope that you won’t recognize the attack for what it is until it’s too late; for example, it might begin with the notion coming into your mind that the simple truth won’t serve to persuade whoever you need to persuade so that you can do what needs to be done, and therefore you need to amplify the truth, and eventually outright lie, saying whatever you think will persuade regardless of whether it’s true or not. The idea at the root of it, that the simple truth will not suffice, is itself a pernicious lie. Whether simple or complex, great or small, Truth is the Way of the Protectors of the Realm; tell the Truth, and no force can withstand you.’

Before I could raise another objection, he raised his hand. ‘Again, here we are.’ His gesture encompassed the misty grayness surrounding us. ‘However much you may doubt yourself, the One does not doubt you.’

His words called forth another memory: the one time I had spoken directly to the One, though it seemed uncannily murky in my mind. I had near-perfect recall of most of the rest of my life; why couldn’t I call these memories to mind as easily?

‘The Enemy wants you to forget your old wisdom,’ The First Protector said, ‘and a part of you is trying to help the Enemy in that end, as a part of all of us worked in life to aid the Enemy. Resist it, and the One will aid you to overcome. The Truth shall triumph, regardless.’

Again, the advice was oddly familiar; I decided that meant I recognized the truth of it, and nodded, trying to fix this conversation in my mind beyond the Enemy’s ability to blur it.

‘Remember this, Young Protector: if you tell the Truth, no matter the cost to you, you shall triumph.’ With that last statement, the mist fell away, the colors returned to the world and everything went back into motion. Obviously, the First Protector considered that his remark closed the discussion, and I would have to abide by that, having no way to reopen the conversation.

I turned to face Perry, who looked like he was finally ready to talk. I had no real idea how long it had been since I’d set off from the Castle, but I had a nagging feeling of time running out that I was pretty certain was a Prompting.

“I can’t go back,” Perry said in the hollow voice of one hollowed out by grief, “not yet; it’s just too painful.”

“The longer you wait, the harder it will be to return,” I replied, not without compassion. “The days will pass, and staying here will become easier and easier until going back would be unthinkable: not from pain, but from the weight of familiar routine crushing your will to break it.”

Perry scoffed, disdain evident in his eyes. “It’s clear you’ve never had to bear the weight of a loss like mine.”

Anger sparked in my heart, but I tamped it down and replied calmly, “Your pain is blinding you to the truth; the pain I and others have gone through was just as weighty as yours is now.”

“Ah. So, were you forced to watch as your father slowly died before your eyes?”

I closed my eyes… and told the truth, no matter how much it still hurt. “No. When my parents died, it was sudden and violent, and I had no idea it had happened until much later. I certainly never had the chance to tell them goodbye.”

I was unable to keep the pain from my voice as I told this to Perry; in truth, I was barely able to force the words out at all. The memory of the way I had been informed of the plane crash rose in my mind like the tide, and both tears and my gorge rose with it.

Anger flared to meet the pain, fierce and vicious to match the agony I felt: I wanted to rip Perry’s head off with my bare hands for bringing it back; I wanted to tear the whole cottage apart, stick by stick. I could not let this anger master me, though, for I knew where it led. I am the Young Protector; I will NEVER let myself become the Assassin.

Through my tightly clenched teeth, I asked Perry, “Are you quite satisfied?” I tried fixing my mind on his face, using the memories of our adventures together to push the memory of my pain back; it worked enough that I began to calm. I just needed to re-center myself so that the pain would slither back into its lair at the back of my mind, and I’d be myself again.

The Truth had indeed penetrated the fog of Perry’s grief: his eyes were brimming with tears again, but for my pain rather than his. “How long has it been?” he asked quietly.

“Just over a year,” I told him. “It gets better after a while—it’s usually not nearly as bad now. But every so often, something happens…” I let my voice trail off.

Perry opened his mouth, but shut it after a moment without saying anything.

I looked Perry dead in the eyes and told him the truth again. “You have a chance to say goodbye to your father. No matter how much it will hurt now to do so, the regret will burn much worse in you if you don’t.”

A weary and resigned look came over Perry’s face. “Let us go, then.”

Silence fell over us again as we left the cottage…

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. A Little Rumble

We hadn’t gone far down the rather cramped path from the cottage when a band of maybe a dozen Scowrers charged out of cover and into our way. They were mostly young, which meant they were a wilding band out to live off whatever and whoever they could kill, and they obviously thought they could kill us.

The Sword flashed into my hand, but instead of immediately striking out with it, I held back for a moment and said, “Turn back and live! Behold, I bear the Sword, and it shall not fail me, so turn back and live!”

They were young, foolish, and convinced of their own immortality, so they ignored me and their first wave of four plug ugly mugs rushed to the attack. Five seconds later, this first wave of four were all dead. I looked at their next wave and repeated, “Turn back and live.”

So, of course, all eight of them that were left tried to attack at once this time, which only proved that numbers can hamper the side employing them as much as their opponents. The path they had to charge up was so narrow that they were literally tripping over each other even as they tried to kill Perry and me, making them look more like the Keystone Kops or the Three Stooges than bloodthirsty warriors. The last one to reach us tripped over one of his comrades’ corpses and fell right onto the Sword, which would have been hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.

“I need to remember to send someone back to take care of the bodies,” I muttered to myself as I guided Perry over the improvised minefield the strewn corpses formed in the path. I would have chalked the encounter up to just bad luck and put it from my mind, but when we reached where the path debouched on to the main road, a gargantuan cloud of smoke arose and a huge, threatening and dishearteningly familiar shape emerged from its depths.

The Magician had returned, again. He was in his dragon form, also again. Also also again, he was probably aiming to kill us and take over the Realm for his own sadistic games, which were like those of the Scowrers, but even more cruel (and magic based).

I swear, just about every time I meet this guy, I wind up seemingly killing him, but he always comes back, ready for another round. What do I have to do to get rid of him for good?

(Before you say, “Cut his head off and his heart out!”, I was about to try that the last time I saved my Alamsta from him; as with all the other times I killed him, his body vanished before I could get to it.)

Anyway, in case you needed reminding, the Magician is the most powerful and most capable of the Enemy that I’ve faced; he was also the first of the Enemy that I ever faced, back on my very first trip to the Realm—a Realm he’d already conquered at the time. He’d been in human form then; to distinguish that form from the one he currently wore, I’ll refer to his dragon form as “the Dragon”.

The Dragon belched a gout of flame at us. Not having the Medallion in my possession to ward off the foul beast’s magics, I closed my eyes and tried to shield Perry with my body, but he twisted us around so that he faced the Dragon himself. I was prepared for a fiery death as punishment for my failure to protect Perry, but the searing heat I’d expected didn’t come. When I opened my eyes, I saw Perry brandishing the Medallion at the cowering Dragon.

As it recoiled, Perry lowered his arm, turned, and rather sheepishly handed the Medallion to me. “I took this from the Reliquary when Merry and I were wed; it belongs to you, though, Young Protector.”

“It belongs to the Realm, and the Line of Magnatharast,” I replied, donning the Medallion reverently, “and it will not suffer be worn by those without the right or duty to do so.” Bearing the Medallion, and the Sword for that matter, were Perry’s right, and my duty.

The familiar weight around my neck renewed me in some way I can’t put into words: it wasn’t that my faith had been flagging, yet it was shored up; it wasn’t that I had ben tired, yet I was rested; and it wasn’t that I had been lacking in determination, yet I was as unswayable as a mass of granite. All this was good, for during the brief interchange between Perry and me, the Dragon had stopped recoiling and was on the advance once more.

Bolstered by the power of the Medallion and bearing the Sword, I moved forward to meet the Enemy, the Young Protector ready to defend my charge.

The Dragon snapped close, and then paused, seemingly awaiting my riposte. Shifting the Sword to a guard blocking the Dragon’s attempted strike, I held my peace as well, though the Dragon repeated this odd move several times. Finally, I realized what the Dragon was attempting: the Enemy was tempting me to relapse into violence. My striking at the Dragon aggressively and with dubious cause would set me back on the road to becoming the Assassin.

“I will not let you bait me into my destruction; if you desire to kill me, you will have to risk yourself on a real strike.” My voice was firm and calm, further reinforcing my message to the Dragon: _I will not be tempted._

The Dragon laughed, a sound that filled me with apprehension. “Were I really trying to kill you, you’d be dead.” The Sword begged to differ, but I let the Dragon’s boast pass in silence. “I don’t need to kill either of you; all I need is to keep both of you here for just a little bit longer.”

In an instant, the realization of what the Dragon meant flooded my mind. Heedless of the threat the Dragon posed, I looked back at Perry in horror and outright bellowed, “RUN! RUN FOR THE CASTLE!” I turned back just in time to block a bite or three from the Dragon’s hideous maw.

Alamanast was dying right now; were we to waste any more time, Perry would be too late to reconcile with his father.

Perry was already turning to run when I saw the realization come over him, as well. He started off down the road at what was probably the fastest sprint he’d ever managed, while I continued to hold the Dragon at bay with Sword and Medallion.

Unfortunately, the Medallion only protected those still within its range from the Dragon’s dark powers. After a few seconds, the Dragon gestured with a claw, and Perry slowed precipitously, as though he were now slogging through thick and gooey mud. I ran to him, and as soon as I touched him, the Medallion flashed, breaking him free of the spell. Whatever the Dragon had done had enervated Perry dreadfully, though; he could barely even walk anymore. I couldn’t afford to stay behind and block the Dragon any longer.

In a single blind throw, I hurled the Sword at the Dragon with a silent prayer on my lips—and decapitated the Enemy!

I didn’t tarry to see what became of the Dragon’s remains: we had to get to the Castle. Half carrying the exhausted prince, I rushed us back to the castle as quickly as I could…

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. The King Is Dead…

I’m still not quite sure when the Dragon stopped chasing us. The need to get Perry to the Castle as quickly as possible consumed both me and Perry to the point where neither of us paid any heed to anything else. Perry was still young and athletic enough to recover quickly, so he tried to shrug my aid off and sprint on his own every few minutes; unfortunately, he would tire again almost as quickly and need my aid.

After what felt like a few eternities of this cycle repeating itself interminably, we reached the gates and gained entrance; I don’t know what the guards thought when they saw us coming, but they certainly recognized Perry, so they let us in. The Dragon must not have been after us at that point, because I’m pretty sure they weren’t shaking with terror; they just seemed rather naturally confused.

Our appearance was obviously shocking, as most of the servants we came across froze in shock at the sight of us; I wound up having to keep surging ahead and opening the doors for Perry that the doorkeepers should have seen to but were too stunned to. There were many, many such doors, as the oddity of the Heir Apparent running down the castle corridors was obviously all but stupefying to the servants we encountered.

Unfortunately for us, the King’s Chambers were on one of the uppermost floors of the keep: trying to mount the seemingly endless stairs was easily the worst part of our trek, especially after all that running. Perry had to stop several times, and even I nearly threw up from the effort to mount them. We finally made it to the right floor, though, however barely.

Our goal was in sight now down the length of yet another corridor, appointed as the others had been with rich carpeting and lush tapestries, though here the tapestries were lusher and the carpeting richer. Not about to be gainsaid so close to the goal, I pulled Perry along for half the corridor’s length before sprinting ahead. Perry managed not to fall on his face when deprived of my support, and an effort that was more sheer willpower than stamina drove him after me.

I should mention that all those corridors that we had to traverse were actually the final layer of the Castle’s defenses: were the enemy to breach the keep, some of the defenders could set up a series of blocking positions in the corridors while others in the adjoining rooms raked the enemy with arrows and such through cunningly disguised loops in the walls; it hindered us far less, of course, but it was still a hindrance.

I threw the final door open for Perry, who stumbled into the King’s Chambers so awkwardly that I was shocked that he didn’t fall headlong a dozen times over; but he made it to the bedside without incident. Kneeling, he only managed to choke out, “Father…” before bursting into tears. The frail, palsied wreck in the bed, all that was left of the once mighty Alamanast King of the Realm, Second of that Name, lifted a terribly shaky hand and tenderly cupped his son’s wet cheek, though it obviously took quite an effort for him to do so.

This was a very private moment I had bumbled my way into; fortunately, the only people in the room were: Perry; the King; Merry; her father, a noted physician named Weygand Maxime; two or three attendants acting as orderlies for the doctor who were now edging for the door; and me. It was definitely time for me to follow the attendants’ example and disappear discreetly.

As I left, I saw Merry pull Perry into an embrace of shared grief. I pulled the door closed and put my back against it, glaring at the doorkeeper, who yielded the post to me. Anyone who wanted to get in there would have to go through me first.

“It’s amazing how certain you are of that.” It was, of course, the Dragon’s voice. Everything froze around me, ensuring that the conversation we were about to have would remain private. “All you insects put so much faith in your thick walls and your physical prowess to keep you safe, as though they made you invulnerable. Was all that ‘protection’” —the Dragon took pains to emphasize the word— “enough to keep me out when we first met? Were thick walls, locked doors and distance enough to keep me from gazing into your soul before either of us had laid eyes on one another?”

“Weak though it was, my physical prowess was enough to see you impaled like a pincushion,” I retorted. “And your divinations weren’t keen enough for you to learn from the King where the Reliquary was, or stop me from donning the Medallion. You could warp men’s bodies easily enough, but your dark arts could not prevail against this!” I brandished the Medallion, hoping that the Dragon could see what I was doing even though I couldn’t see the Dragon.

Before the Dragon voice could reply, I added, in a calm and contemplative tone, “I have taken note of something else about you, despite my lack of otherworldly or extrasensory talents: when you are especially impotent, you like to sow doubt in the minds of those warding against you, hoping they’ll slip up and allow you an opening through which you can slither towards your objective. Again, you do this only when you’re especially impotent or powerless; I will not allow you power when you possess none.”

The Medallion suddenly flashed as though hit by a searchlight, and I knew that the Dragon had just sent an eldrich attack against me that the Medallion had thwarted. I sincerely hoped it was a measure of the Dragon’s frustration at the truth of my words, and not simply another attempt to catch me off guard.

A cry made its way through the thick door. I jumped in surprise as everything rushed into motion again. The Dragon began to laugh. “Now you will see that there is powerless--and there is helpless; and you will know which of those you truly are.” Another cry rang out, barely recognizable as human, and the Dragon laughed all the more. The laughter mingled with the cries until I could hardly distinguish one from the other.

Unable to stand it any longer, I flung the door open, only to see Alamanast King of the Realm, Second of that Name, breathe his last. I swear I saw his soul depart his body between one blink and the next. In the long moment of silence that followed, shockingly quiet after all the terrible noises of a prolonged and painful death, Doctor Maxime moved over to the corpse and respectfully closed its eyes. “Be at peace, my Liege,” he murmured.

It rather randomly occurred to me that the last time I had heard tell of Doctor Maxime, he had been busily administrating a far-off fief of the Realm in a sky-land mostly inhabited by giants rather than practicing medicine. I could certainly see Merry calling on her father to help her father-in-law, of course, but who was minding the store back there? Doctor Maxime had been the best choice since most of his fellows were corrupt power-seeking fools who collaborated with the giants to keep the humans underfoot instead of contributing as equals.

It’s interesting where your mind takes you when you don’t want to think about something in particular; the above excursus was part of my mind’s desperate attempt to not think about the sad shell still resting on the bed. Alamanast had been a good King of the Realm; now it was up to Perry to prove himself a worthy successor.

Perry slowly stood and faced the door, bone-deep weariness etched in every line of his body; but there was a new weight and moment in him as well. “Let it be known,” he announced in hollow tones, “that the King is dead.”

Behind me, one or more of the servants rushed to obey their new King’s bidding…

TO BE CONTINUED


	7. …Long Live the King

One thing that my time of being instructed by the monks taught me is that church bells can ring in all sorts of special ways for all sorts of special things: celebrations; festivals; births; but deaths have a special form all of their own for the bells, almost a code for those that care to learn it: thus, “for whom the bell tolls”, which (I am reliably informed) is still the custom in certain more rural areas, though I’d never heard such on my admittedly brief visits to summer camps before the Crash, and certainly no one sounded the bells for Manfredi and Johnson. The Realm had its own particular code for the bells to sound that would alert one and all to unite in mourning for the King; this was called the Peal of Mourning, and it was one of those things you learned but hoped you never had to hear or use.

Almost as soon as Alamanast died, the bells rang out from the carillon allotted to the Castle’s chapel, solemnly tolling the Peal of Mourning for the late King. It seemed like the Peal of Mourning went on and on for hours, and all the while—

If I live to be a hundred, I’ll still swear up and down that as the bells tolled the Peal of Mourning for Alamanast, I could hear that accursed Dragon laughing again with every last note.

As soon as Perry had made the announcement that the king was dead, just about everyone had vanished in maybe a dozen separate directions, except for one small middle-aged woman with a bundle in her arms: this was the Royal Nurse, who had charge of the Royal Infant while both Merry and Perry were otherwise unavoidably occupied (usually some affair of state or the like). She looked rather overwhelmed by all that was happening around her, so I went over to her to see what I could do to assist.

The Line of Magnatharast has a custom for naming those in the direct line of succession that was supposedly begun by Magnatharast himself, all written out and official-like; I knew it was still being held to in the days of Alamanast XII because the Alamsta of that time, “my” Alamsta, had named off all of her sisters for me, and they all matched the Daughterly Names on the List. Incidentally, this meant that the recently deceased Alamanast had seen quite a bit of tragedy, as at least one of his sons and one of his daughters were dead (I was hoping Perry’s five other heretofore unmentioned sisters were just married off outside the Realm or something). At any rate, Perry and Merry’s little infant was another Alamanast, hopefully the Third of that Name to Reign. For now, however, he was known as Little Alamanast; hopefully, he’ll ditch the “Little” sooner than I ditch the “Young” in Young Protector.

The nurse in whose charge Merry had left Little Alamanast had been understandably distraught at the death of the king, and her upset was causing the infant upset, so I decided to be gallant but idiotic and spell the nurse until she was less distrait. Usually, the nurse and the infant were hidden away in the nursery together while all the chaos was far away and the only thing the nurse had to worry about was the baby; this whole thing had been much more of an ordeal than any of the Castle staff were used to, so everybody was pretty equally frazzled, aside from me.

I say “I decided to be idiotic”; I have mentioned before the strange and seemingly universal inclination babies and toddlers have either to scream at the sight of me or to throw up all over me, or sometimes both, so I was rather nervously expecting some such occurrence as soon as the nurse left. Contrary to my expectations, Little Alamanast did neither: in fact, he giggled and cooed and did that thing babies do (usually only for other people than me) where they wave their arms and legs around. This was quite unusual, though not in a bad way.

“So surprising that one of the Line of Magnatharast would take an instant liking to one of the Protectors, isn’t it?” Merry gently snarked from behind me. She could use some practice if she meant to wield her snark anywhere near as effectively as her descendants would; perhaps she was holding back for the baby’s sake. Little Alamanast let out a cry of delight at his mother’s voice before I could answer.

In one swift movement, Merry scooped her baby into her arms and turned her back on me, telling me over her shoulder, “You’ll need to ready yourself for the Investiture and Coronation anon—suitable raiment can be provided you at need.”

“I suspect my attire already awaits me,” I replied, moving to the door, “so I shall repair whither I think it may be found, by your leave.”

Merry waved, still not turning around, and I quit the room.

My feet took me through the Castle unerringly to the Tower of the Protectors and, just as I had surmised, I found a very ceremonial garment already laid out for me. It was the sort of garment that needs only minimal sizing for the most part, but what needed to fit me was a perfect fit. Yeah, never let it be said that the First Protector is incomplete in his preparations in any way.

The garment was a strange cross between a toga and a kilt, but putting it on proved remarkably easy, and it was nowhere near as restrictive to my freedom of movement as a suit would have been. If I had to guess, I’d say it had been designed to allow the Protector wearing it to, well, Protect those under his care while at a formal shindig while looking dressy and impressive.

Now properly attired to witness an Investiture (whatever that was), I went back down to the main area of the Castle, and was directed to the Great Hall, where the ceremonies would soon begin.

Apparently, the Realm had a high council or senate of sorts; it was known as “the Council of the Fiefs”, composed of one representative from each fiefdom, and it held the power of Investiture over the Rulers of the Realm. This meant that the prospective king or queen had to be approved by the Council before their official Coronation could take place, but it was generally seen as just a rubber-stamp, given that the Council had never yet failed to Invest a candidate (not that there had been that many between Magnatharast and Perry, who would become Perethegrast the First soon).

I had wondered earlier about how the “Realm Above” was being led and represented before the Throne of the Realm with Merry married to Perry and her father doing his best to help Alamanast II fight his losing battle with death; I found out when I entered the Great Hall, for I immediately spotted two very familiar faces, which were really the same face: the Lempreyson twins, who had been on the High Council of the “Realm Above”, were apparently now the representatives to the Realm Proper, and…

Thalia, the Giants’ envoy to the Realm from the “Realm Above”, looked surprised to see me like everyone esle, but she also looked pleased. She and the Lempreyson twins came over to greet me, as well as another familiar face: Narimsta, youngest daughter of Alamanast II. The two girls were each married to a Lempreyson twin, and all four seemed more than merely content at the situation.

Narimsta looked spookily like her older sister Alamsta, who had become Dark Alamsta the Witch; it turned out that they were twins, which led to some interesting speculation on my part about the attraction her Lempreyson twin had for her. I wanted to ask about her unmentioned sisters, but I never got the nerve up, which is odd considering what I asked Thalia about.

As an aside, I somewhat gingerly asked Thalia how a giant being married to a human even worked, as the two were so different in almost every possible way that I couldn’t imagine the plumbing (as it were) would be compatible. She told me that there was an apple for that: the apple that shrunk her to a manageable 9 foot stature had also fixed that part. She didn’t say more, and I wasn’t curious enough to press her.

During the brief period in which I’d been able to observe them, the Lempreyson twins had struck me as being not dissimilar to some of the kids at Camp: not particularly good, but still salvageable under the right influences. Apparently Thalia and Narimsta were the right influences, because both twins now seemed much more inclined to doing what was right over what was expedient; the weight of representing their whole people before the Throne of the Realm might also have helped steady them.

Both Investiture and Coronation went off without a hitch, and before I knew it, the swirling grayness of my journey home had enveloped me once more…

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. Camp Mind

It was raining when I popped back into Camp, an unseasonably cold and fierce downpour, though not a thunderstorm. I was in the shelter of an overhanging eave which spared me most of the soaking the sky was determined to deliver to me, but my shoes started sinking into the mud more or less immediately. Fortunately, I was able to keep them from being sucked under by embarking on a spirited but rather poor imitation of Gene Kelly, though he was dancing on what was supposed to be blacktop.

I was still inside the compound in which we campers were supposed to remain, but rather near the place Manfredi and Johnson had tried to make their escape. I was not nearly ghoulish enough to desire to gawk at their route, so I was about to make tracks for my quarters when—

“Oh, swell.” I turned. Cookie and Joey stood behind me, identical looks of dismay on their faces. The speaker was Cookie, which rather surprised me, as she hadn’t been the talkative one of the pair. Both of them were completely soaked, even though they were huddled under the same shelter as I was, which kind of surprised me until they explained.

Almost immediately after it had begun (which was almost immediately after I’d left), the rain had broken through every roof in the compound; how, nobody knew, though there were grumblings about the goons actively sabotaging the roofs to make us all even more miserable. Anyway, the goons were all bone-dry because they had been issued ponchos and hip waders, while everyone else was wet to the bone, which made for the following problem:

Everyone in Camp was soaked except the goons and me. If I was seen in my (more-or-less) pristine state—well, things might get even uglier than they have been towards me; possibly to the point that even Melegrethan might not be able to aid me.

“Oh, swell” indeed.

Cookie and Joey put their heads together for a few moments and came up with the obvious: I needed to stand out in the rain until I was soaked enough to pass muster while the two of them kept watch to make sure I wasn’t seen. Now, since they’d arrived together, no one in Camp thought twice about the two of them bumming around together, especially since most of the straighter arrows among the campers kept an eye out when they saw the duo to make certain they stayed unmolested.

So I stepped out into the rain like, well, someone without enough sense to come in out of the rain. Sometimes I felt like I had that little wisdom, but this was a bit much. Yet I had to go through it, so I looked around for something to take my mind off of my wet misery.

The sky had that “I’m a painting!” look to it that always put me in mind of Michaelangelo and other such Renaissance painters, only this painting was in motion as the clouds and the sun shifted and the rain poured down on me. Even in my increasingly sodden state, I spent many happy moments staring up at this incredibly beautiful art show unfolding in the skies above me. It was truly captivating, and I was captivated.

“Hey, Sefton!”

Oh, yeah; that was me being yelled at, wasn’t it. My nom de guerre in the Camp is Jay J Sefton, but few people actually use it when they talk to me; usually they call me “Kick Boy” or the like because of my being Melegrethan’s prize student, or some epithet that implies that I deliberately seek out the staffers’ favor. Mostly it’s the staffers who call me “Sefton”.

I looked around to see who was calling me; it turned out to be Mr Duke, Mrs Hoffy’s right-hand man. He and I have never particularly liked each other, but neither are we adversaries or anything like that. Certainly Mr Duke respects Melegrethan, and a certain measure of that carries over to Melegrethan’s students and to me as their top dog (as such).

The conversation that followed was guarded and complex on both sides. Mr Duke mostly confined himself to asking about Melegrethan’s self-defense classes and how the students therein were shaping up; I told him I’d been busy doing a special project for “Mr Grethan” and so hadn’t been around them much today, so my info was perhaps out of date, and then I told him my various assessments of the students and how the current situation was affecting them, and sometimes effecting them, as with Manfredi and Johnson.

The conversation was interesting enough to take my mind off of my swiftly increasingly sodden state, but what really caught my attention was what wasn’t said on either side. Everything Mr Duke said had an undercurrent of suspicion, though not outright hostility, which made me more guarded in my responses than I might otherwise have been. He seemed to accept my takes on the other students, but I’m not quite clear on what his motives for asking me specifically (rather than, say, Harry or McKay or any of the others) were. Maybe he already asked them and wanted my take, too, so he could get a bunch of different views. Maybe he was testing me in some way.

The conversation ended when Cookie and Joey came up to us and reminded me that their self defense class session was supposed to begin in the next few minutes, and that Mr Grethan had assigned me as his locum for that class. Since Cookie, Joey and I needed to go, we went, but not before Mr Duke gave the three of us a very dark look.

“I wonder if Mr Duke’ll be watching us from the back room,” I mused as we walked (more like swam, but still) through the rain, which still showed no signs of letting up.

“You mean like Mr Grethan does?” Cookie asked.

After throwing her a look almost as dark as the last one Mr Duke had given us, I replied, “Yes, but rather less charitably, since Mr Grethan isn’t expecting to need to step in, though he’s ready to if we mess up badly enough that it looks like somebody’s going to get hurt or something.”

The session went smoothly enough, despite how sodden we all were; as always when I get Sent to the Realm, I went to the little cubbyhole Melegrethan has set aside for me and wrote this all down. Next on the agenda: dinner! It’ll probably be as soaked through as everything else has been since I got back, but as long as it’s warm, I’ll eat it, since my stomach would be quite annoyed with me if I didn’t.

I have a few final thoughts to set down here before I go, though.

Looking back on it, it’s pretty obvious that Mr Duke had seen me in my pristine state, and how Cookie and Joey had helped me rectify the situation, but he’s apparently going to keep the information to himself, at least for now; I’m not sure why. He and Mr Price are, as a rule, merely cordial towards each other, but no more than that, so Mr Duke hopefully isn’t in on ‘it’, whatever the ‘it’ Mr Price and his goons are running is.

Just what on Earth are they running, anyway? I have the bad feeling that finding out may be the death of me.

THUS ENDS

The Reluctant King

Being the Thirteenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion

THE STORY CONTINUES WITH

A Look Ahead

Being the Fourteenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion


End file.
